Darkness
by Jean Carter
Summary: This is the original story of Melanie Frank, a mutant who is unearthed while the x-men are in high school.
1. Prologue

Prologue  
The rain mists the quiet grounds outside the Xavier Institute for the Gifted. She stares placidly out the window, eyeing her reflection with a mixture of disdain and appreciation. The coffee cup she holds in glove concealed hands steams softly, fogging the glass pane in front of her. She turns back to the man sitting expectantly beside the fire. Even in a wheel chair, Professor Charles Xavier is the most imposing yet at the same time gentlest figure she has ever met. Like the stern father that can't help but spoil his children. He has always been there for her, just as he is trying to be there for her now. Wearily, she sits across from him, setting down her cup and reaching for her hair in nervous habit. She pauses when her fingers close on empty air. She wonders vaguely if she will ever get used to the chin length cut of her soft blonde hair. Of course, it's not really blonde any more. Instead it is dark, almost black, and what was once dominantly blonde has faded into muted highlights. She sighs and instead, draws her hand roughly over the black, cotton sleeves of her turtle neck, as though to chafe away cold she doesn't feel.

"Are you ready Melanie?" Xavier asks. She sighs again and nods. "You don't have to do this if you don't want to. I certainly won't make you."

"No." Her voice is quieter and hoarser than she intended. She clears her throat and tries again. She clears her throat and tries again. "No. I'm ready."

He nods slowly and closes his eyes before placing withered hands on her skull. A bright light whips across her vision and the room, the cold rainy day, and the present moment at the Xavier Institute melts away.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

She had been born Melanie Elaine Frank to Debby and Allen Frank in Glenwood Springs Colorado. IT was a small mountain town with a school and a home and at 14 that was all she needed. There were a few others her age, perhaps a couple hundred kids under 40. In that town, winter was three seasons long and Summer was the equivalent of a warm Spring day in some of the lower cities. She was walking home with three books worth of finals hidden in her back pack. She sighed, twirling a long blonde braid between her thin fingers. She hated school, even though she was good at it. There were too many formulas and numbers. Why couldn't teachers just say what they want in plain English?

Her friend, Amy, skipped to her side. "Wasn't Chris Keller just amazing out there?" She gushed. She was talking about the pre- break game that they all had been forced to sit through.

"Hmmm, I guess." Melanie didn't love sports by any means, so she hadn't really aid Chris Keller and his band of super jocks any attention today. A grimace passed over Melanie's face as a brief needle of pain shot through her temple. Amy noticed.

"Huh? Are you okay Mel?"  
"Yeah, just… distracted." She didn't tell Amy that the headaches had gotten worse over the past two weeks. "I have 3 finals tomorrow."

"Ugh! How can you think about school when break is next week?"  
"Like This."

"Oh sure. You act all academically inclined now," Amy grinned slyly. "But I saw you in first period. The only thing you were studying was James Bryant!"

"Ack! I was not!"

"Were too. You were all, 'Oh James notice me in all your glory!' I don't know what it is about you and a wrestler."  
Melanie hurried on, blushing furiously. "Forget it Amy."  
"Yeah," Amy laughed, "Nothing more appealing than two guys rolling around on a sweaty mat. SO have you asked him to winter formal?"  
"No. Come on Amy, I'm a freshman and he's a-"  
"God."

The two girls burst out laughing. "No!' Melanie giggled "a junior. He's not going to go for me."

"You never know until you try."  
"Hmmmm."

"Come on Mel, what's not to go for? You're thin, pretty, smart and you can hold a conversation that's about more than just next season's shoes. That is more than half tohose other sluts have going for them."  
"Are _you _asking me out or is he?" Melanie grinned wryly.  
"I'm just saying give it a shot. The result may surprise you."  
"Doubt it."

They rounded an alley corner that lead to a back street. Melanie shivered. She hated this route, even though it was the shortest way home. The reasons she hated it were leaning against the grimy alley wall puffing on cigarettes and leering as the two girls came into sight. There were 5 of them, jeering and catcalling. Unshaven, unwashed, dropouts with nothing better to do. Yippee. Usually they either weren't there or left the two girls alone. As they neared, Melanie's head exploded in pain. She drew in a sharp gasp, clutching her skull.  
"Melanie?" Amy's voice was garbled and confused. Tears stung at Melanie's eyes. Cold sweat beaded her forehead, and fear gripped her as the pain slid form her brain and saturated the rest of her body. She fell to her knees moaning, gritting her teeth, trying to make it stop. Her joints felt as though they were being pulled apart. Needles of agony tore at every molecule in her being.

"Your friend doesn't look so good." The creeps had stalked over, circling the two girls.

"Back off, this has nothing to do with you." Amy's voice shook in terror.

"Come on sugar, don't be like that." One of them reached for her, latching onto her wrist.

"HEY LET GO!"  
Amy's voice had long since grown distant. Melanie's head was filled with so much pain that she couldn't really tell what was going on, but she knew that something was wrong. Her eyes flew open as one of them grabbed her by the shirt. He paused. Two seconds ago the girl had been normal, easy pickings. Now her eyes were jet black and soulless. Neither pupil, nor any iris could be seen, just empty darkness. She opened her mouth, grinning wildly. He dropped her as her mouth slowly turned as black and empty as her eyes. A dark substance emitted from her body like a thick black fog. The 5 men howled as it encompassed them in its wake, burning them, destroying them, ripping them apart. Amy shrieked as the substance clawed at her. The creature winced and fell back to its knees with a grimace.  
The darkness retreated pulled back, towards the girl who cried out in sheer pain. As the last of the darkness came to her, Melanie shuddered, falling unconscious to the pavement, alone in the dark alley, the tortured body of her friend shrouded in inky blackness.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

She rears back away from the touch, trying to erase the scene from her mind. She gasps for air, tears stream down her face.

"Are you all right?" Xavier asks gently. She is shaking. Her nails dig into her flesh.

"I-I'm sorry I just…"

"I understand if you want to stop. These are painful memories, things one should never have to relive."

"No…no. I'm all right. Please keep going." He nods and when her heart rate finally slows, proceeds.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

When the police found her, she confessed to everything. She told them about the black fog and the 5 men that had seemingly disappeared. She confessed to hurting Amy, to the pain, to every twisted thing that had happened. They hadn't believed her. For weeks she tried to confess her parents of the same. They pinned her ravings to trauma and hysteria. Finally, when Amy died of her injuries, they signed her up for therapeutic counseling. Her headaches got worse, her whole body would ache, pained by the burden of what it concealed. Small things began disappearing. Bids rabbits and even the family cat eventually went missing. The Frank house became a place of desolation where wildlife dare not go. The entire time, Melanie cried sobbing as though her heart was breaking apart. To her it was. When questioned about the disappearing animals, she again confessed to everything. Assuming that weekly counseling wasn't enough and at their wits end at what to do, her parents enrolled her in a mental ward in Denver.

"I'm sorry!" she had cried as men in white suits carried suitcases of clothing from her house. "Please don't. I need you!"  
"What you need is help, sweetie." Her mother had smiled through tears. "And we just don't know how to help you."

She learned that her parents had made her a ward of the state in order to give her to the Psychiatric hospital. She had no parents, no family, and no home. At 14 years old, she was completely alone. The first nights were the worst. Animal noises, laughter, crazed sobbing all became sounds as natural to Melanie Frank as school bells or the sounds of her parents voices had once been. After a few months, the insanity of the other patients stopped bothering her. Instead her mind obsessed itself with the pain. Her heart would clench and her fingers would shake. Every bone in her body would splinter, every nerve would fray. At least, that was how it felt. One day she woke up screaming in agony, and despite the efforts of the doctors, she didn't stop until they sedated her 5 hours later.

No one really knew when the doctors and nurses first started disappearing. The other patients wouldn't go near "the cursed one" but they jabbered endlessly about how this doctor or that nurse had tried to give the cursed one her medicine or how they had gone into her room for something and had never come out. The substance within her had become so hungry that the only way to stop the pain was to release it from her body. She watched it consume four or five people at that hospital, calling it back to her after every time. That had been the only control she had seemed to have over it, the ability to keep it inside her, and the ability to call it back to her. Granted this was not easy. Each day she sat tensely in her room, feeling her muscles bind and ache. More than once, she fainted from the pain.

But worse than keeping the thing inside her body and feeling it tear at her from the inside was calling it back to her once it had escaped. Every living thing it touched it devoured and it didn't want to go back to its host body. To pull it back required more physical and mental force than the girl had and she would collapse after wards, drained of all energy. Eventually, the bouts of unconsciousness stopped.

This place of whitewashed walls and shrieking, laughing inmates was where Charles Xavier and the Telepathic Enhancement Device known as CEREBRO found her. Her door opened and she looked up in terror, afraid of what might happen if the doctor or nurse or whoever this was got too close.

"Melanie," the nurse said sweetly, "you have some visitors."  
_Visitors_? What did she mean? Melanie never had visitors. Not here. But the nurse was right. Behind her were two visitors. The man was bald and lived in, what appeared to be permanently, a comfortable looking wheelchair. The girl that was with him was pale and sour looking. A white streak ran through her cropped maroon colored hair. Melanie shrank back, fearful of her curse. She didn't want this, didn't want to hurt these people. The nurse closed the door behind her.  
"Don't be afraid Melanie," The man smiled gently.

"What did they do to her?" A soft twang of Louisiana colored the girl's voice.

"Locked her away Rouge. That was all they needed to do." Melanie hated the pity in his eyes and hated even more to know just how deserving of it she was.  
"Please don't come closer." She begged. "I don't want to hurt anyone. "

"You won't hurt us Melanie. We just want to talk."  
"Talk?"

"About you. About your gift and what you can do with it."  
She sighed." I don't know who you've been talking to Mister, but this isn't a gift."  
"Yes it is." His smile returned. "You see Rouge and I-"

_-Are like you. _She gasped as his voice echoed in her mind. _We have talents that at first, didn't appear to be gifts either. But we learned to control them. _"Just like you can." He said out loud. "With proper training, you could use your powers for the betterment of Mankind. "

She shook her head and pulled anxiously at her frazzled hair. "No. This ability…it doesn't save people. It destroys them. If you were to touch me right now, it would consume you, kill you even. I'm cursed, not gifted."  
The girl, Rouge, knelt before her and raised a hand. "Believe me," She muttered " I know the feeling."

"Rouge drains the energy of every being she touches," Xavier explained." And like you she felt that her gift was a curse, but with proper training and guidance, her gift has saved countless lives."  
"Yours could too," said Rouge, "If you gave it half a chance, besides," she murmured, "It would get you outa here." As if on cue, a manic cackle sounded. Melanie shuddered.

"You aren't crazy Melanie." Xavier said kindly, "you just need a little control."  
She paused for a moment and stared up at the two strangers. What did they know of her? Why did they care so much? Why did they feel like the safest option?

She lowered her head, and when it was raised, she made up her mind. She would join them and learn more. She would learn about this thing she had to live with and she would not be the cause of any more suffering. Xavier smiled. He didn't need her to repeat herself. The Institute had gained a new pupil.


End file.
